Adding coconut oil is a controversial weight loss method with limited scientific backing. Proponents include nutritionists and professional athletes, who say coconut oil is a nutritious, metabolism-boosting fat. The key to getting the most out of coconut oil is to use a type with minimal processing. You can look for the words "cold pressed" on the label and use your senses of sight, smell and taste to judge its purity.
How to Spot Virgin or Extra Virgin Coconut Oil
There is no difference between virgin and extra virgin coconut oil. Both are terms that mean minimal processing. Virgin, cold-pressed coconut oil will be colorless, white in solid form and clear as a liquid. Coconut oil liquefies at a temperature of about 80 degrees. Commercial grade--additionally processed--coconut oil is yellow, but some manufacturers add bleach to coconut oil to disguise processing. Check the labels for additives--there will not be any in virgin coconut oil. Cold-processed virgin or extra virgin coconut oil will taste and smell like coconut. Additional processing removes both and the resulting product will taste bland and have only a faint coconut scent.
Home Solutions
Few home kitchens are equipped to extract oil from coconut but, if you are serious about insuring the purity of your coconut oil, you have two do-it-yourself options: you can eat raw coconut or make your own coconut milk. Two cups of raw coconut, which you could shred to use in cooking or dry to eat plain, provides slightly more than the 3.5 oz. of coconut oil recommended to promote weight loss. The calorie count in 2 cups of raw coconut is about 560, nearly all of it from fat. If you do not want to shred and measure, a rough guide would be to consume the meat of one raw coconut daily. You could also make homemade coconut milk by shredding raw coconut, soaking it in water and squeezing the coconut to extract the oil and nutrients from the coconut and putting through a sieve to remove coconut particles. Ten ounces of coconut milk provides 3.5 tblsp. of coconut oil and 400 calories.
Britain's Rugby Team Uses Coconut Oil
Matt Lovell, the nutritionist for Britain's rugby team, is among those who believe that coconut oil can help you lose fat. He added coconut oil to the diets of team members in 2007 and said the players lost fast and gained muscle--and average of 4.4 pounds of muscle. Lisa Guy, a nutritionist from Australia, says the properties in coconut oil--it is a medium-chain triglyceride--make it burn like carbohydrates. Fats, such as butter, which are long-chain triglycerides, burn slowly and are more likely to be stored as fat in your body, Guy notes.
Clinical Trial
A study conducted in Brazil to test the effects of adding coconut oil to diets supports the belief that coconut oil converts to energy, boosts metabolism and burns fat. M.L. Assuncao and other scientists who reported their findings in 2009 in "Obesity" found that coconut oil was effective in reducing abdominal fat. In the study, 20 obese women were given 2 tbsp. of coconut oil and 20 were given an equal amount of soybean oil. After 12 weeks, the scientists found that the women who consumed coconut shed a significantly greater amount of belly fat than those whose diets were supplemented with soybean oil.
Detractors
The test, a randomized, double-blind clinical trial, was not extensive enough to convince expert detractors. Bridget Aisbitt, a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, acknowledges that coconut oil may burn differently from other fats but it does not necessarily make it conducive to weight loss. She says the best way to lose weight is to reduce calories. Coconut oil, like all fat, contains twice as many calories as carbohydrates and protein and there is not enough evidence that adding 400 fat calories to your daily diet is beneficial, Aisbitt contends.
References
- "Drug Week"; Studies from M. L. Assucao et al. provide new data on obesity; Drug Week; Aug. 7, 2009
- "The Guardian"; Wellbeing: Coco loco; Lucy Atkins; Jan. 15, 2008
- The Coconut Diet
- MayoClinic.com: Coconut Oil and weight loss: Does it work?
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